Andi Garnett

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of League of Legends, developer Riot Games announced a bevvy of new games, as well as an animated series.

While the studio made its name in the MOBA genre, it will now be delving into the worlds of fighting games, tactical first person shooters, and strategy card games.

Project A is a character-based tactical shooter in the same vein as Overwatch, with characters having specific loadouts and abilities.

The shooter will be set apart from the Leage of Legends world, with a setting based in a near-future Earth.

No release date has been confirmed, but Riot is planning a beta event for early next year and a full release later in 2020.

The other big announcement was a fighting game featuring characters from League of Legends.

With a working title of Project L, the game is in very early development, with the studio noting "we still have a long way to go" while showcasing it on stream.

From what gameplay was shown, the fighter looks to use 2D arenas, with known LoL champions Jinx, Katarina, Darius and Ahri facing off against each other.

Rumours of this title have been circulating for a while since Riot Games acquired Radiant Entertainment – a studio known for their work in the fighting game genre.

Next up was the reveal of League of Legends: Wild Rift, a mobile game that will bring LoL's experience to iOS and Android.

While the game aims to recreate the same look and feel as the original, Wild Rift will stand alone from the PC version – meaning there won't be cross-play, and none of a player's unlocks will carry over.

Riot has built the game from the ground up, with refined matches that are expected to take between fifteen to twenty minutes.

The developer is aiming to make Wild Rift accessible to as many devices as possible, but recommends minimum specifications of either a Galaxy A7 or iPhone 5S.

Pre-orders are available on the Google Play store now, with a release date expected for 2020.

The final game announced was Legends of Runeterra, a strategy card game that is set in the LoL world.

In addition to games, Riot also announced an animated series called Arcane.

The show will tell the origin story of two of heroes from the League of Legends game called Vi and Jinx.

Vi, sporting mechanical fists, is a cop, while Jinx is a bubbly terrorist who sports an explosive arsenal of guns, the two have long been theorised as sisters by the LoL community.

While the trailer doesn't offer too much regarding narrative, fans can expect Arcane to give the two a deeper backstory.

Details of when Arcane will release and on which platform it will stream are yet to be confirmed.

While the games and series offer a promising outlook for a studio that has relied for years on just a single title, the timing of their announcement feels somewhat curious.

Most recently, Riot has been in the headlines for controversy over systemic sexism and toxicity in its workplace, as well an employee walkout back in May done in protest over forced arbitration for resulting harassment lawsuits.

This wouldn't be the first time a developer announced a game way before it was to release, but for a developer that has been a single-title studio for so long, why not wait until there are at least titles for its next tent pole releases?